Police use of force remains constant

Officers in California have killed nearly 1,000 people in six years, according to a Chronicle review of state Department of Justice data that reveals a picture of where violent police encounters occur in the state, and to whom.

But the statistics do not yet offer conclusive results for recent legislative attempts to curtail police violence by toughening the rules of engagement for officers, requiring de-escalation training and bringing in outside investigators when unarmed civilians are killed.

In 2021, California’s law enforcement agencies recorded 628 use-of-force incidents,

resulting in 233 people shot and 149 killed.

These figures represent declines from 2020, when 172 police killings matched a sixyear high and came amid clashes between riot officers and racial justice marchers that prompted police brutality lawsuits and bills to limit the use of less-lethal artillery like rubber bullets and tear gas.

The fact that last year saw 233 people shot instead of 238 the year before wasn’t notable enough to some use-of-force authorities.

“What it tells me is, we’re still shooting a lot of civilians,” said Roger Clark, who spent 27 years at the Los Angeles County Sheriff ’s Department, where he investigated use-of-force incidents and trained deputies on the department’s policy.

In 2021, for the sixth straight year, Los Angeles County had the largest number (172) and highest rate (27.4 incidents per 100,000 residents) of use-offorce incidents in the state.

When it comes to use-offorce rates calculated by population, Los Angeles County was followed distantly by San Bernardino (11.3 incidents per 100,000 residents), San Diego (7.2), Riverside (6.1) and Orange (5.7) counties. No Bay Area county was in the top five, though Alameda County made the top six.

The 10 agencies with the most use-of-force incidents last year were the Los Angeles County Sheriff ’s Department (60 incidents), Los Angeles Police Department (60), San Bernardino County Sheriff ’s Department (39), California Highway Patrol (28), San Diego County Sheriff ’s Department (27), San Bernardino Police Department (20), Bakersfield Police Department (18), Alameda County Sheriff ’s Office (16), and Riverside and Sacramento police departments (15 each).

In the Bay Area, the agencies that reported the most violent encounters with civilians were the Alameda County Sheriff ’s Office (16), San Francisco Police Department (12), San Jose Police Department (11) and Antioch Police Department (seven), while the police departments of Oakland, Napa and Vacaville tied for fifth place with five incidents each.

In Alameda County, which had a rate of 5.1 use-of-force incidents per 100,000 residents, 11 of the 32 incidents occurred after calls for service, 10 while officers were responding to crimes in progress or investigating suspicious circumstances, and seven during in-custody events.

The latest statewide use-offorce report also showed that troubling disparities have yet to subside despite increased awareness and efforts to confront them.

Latino and Black Californians were again vastly overrepresented in use-of-force incidents last year. Latinos make up 40.2% of the state population and were on the receiving end of 50.6% of police force; Black people represent 6.5% of the population but 16.7% of police force incidents.

Meanwhile, white officers involved in violent encounters were slightly overrepresented and Latino and Black officers were slightly underrepresented.

Of the 1,462 officers involved in violent confrontations, not all of whom reported using force, 84% escaped injury.

In all, officers from California’s largest to smallest policing agencies killed 944 people from 2016 through 2021, The Chronicle’s analysis found. Within those years, 2020 tied with 2017 for the most people killed by police around the state with 172.

“I don’t know if we can draw major conclusions on the numbers,” state Assembly Member Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, who’s pushed use-of-force reforms, said of 2020’s spike in police killings.

If 2020 was marked by pandemic lockdowns and racial justice demonstrations, it was also the year when a landmark law was supposed to reduce the number of fatal police encounters in California.

The legislation, AB392 from then-Assembly Member Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, and McCarty, tightened the definition of an imminent threat that an officer must claim to justify using deadly force. The bill, however, still allows an officer’s perception — and not the objective facts on the ground — to determine whether a threat existed to the officer or the public.

Last year, officers perceived the civilians they used force against to be armed 58% of the time; the civilians were confirmed to be armed in 52% of cases, amounting to a 6-percentage-point differential in perception versus reality. In previous years, the inaccuracy gap between an officer thinking a subject was armed and a subject being proved to be armed ranged between 12% in 2020 and 2018 to 15.5% in 2016.

Another piece of reform legislation intended to make a difference was AB1506 from McCarty. Spurred by the May 2020 Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd and the subsequent national uprising, the bill was intended to restore faith in the criminal legal system by empowering the California Department of Justice to investigate all police killings of unarmed civilians and a limited number of other deadly encounters.

Since the law took effect in July 2021, the state Justice Department that Attorney General Rob Bonta commands has opened 23 investigations into fatal police encounters around the state and closed none of them.

McCarty said the state will gain a better understanding of how his law is performing once these reviews start coming out. Whether the attorney general finds that officers acted appropriately or not, McCarty said, “we’ll just live by what the conclusions are.” AB1506 was the Sacramento lawmaker’s third attempt to get such a bill passed through the Legislature, a feat that was aided by law enforcement’s treatment of protesters, videos of which spurred outrage on social media. But, noting the circumstances of Floyd’s death, choking under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, McCarty said he plans to introduce legislation that would expand the attorney general’s scope of authority to all officer killings and shootings, whether the subjects were armed or not.

“Of course, George Floyd was killed by an officer but he wasn’t killed by a firearm,” McCarty said. “The irony is that death would not be evaluated based upon my law.”

James Burch, policy director at the Anti Police-Terror Project, said he was hopeful that another piece of legislation would decrease police violence in California. SB2, by state Sens. Steven Bradford, D-Gardena (Los Angeles County), and Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, passed last September and intends to root out problem officers after it takes effect in January. It creates a decertification process for officers after serious criminal convictions or termination because of misconduct.

“We have to imagine that will have some impact on the amount of officers who are doing the most dirt in the state of California,” Burch said.

Jason Williams, associate professor of justice studies at Montclair State University in New Jersey, said SB2 is the kind of legislation that can convince officers that they’ll be held accountable if they overstep.

“The psychological point of view, from the officer standpoint, is very, very important,” Williams said. “Because if I’m an officer on the beat, and I know that there’s no real accountability coming around, I have no incentive to change my behavior.”